Headlines

Bob Greene

Why cigarettes are here to stay

It all comes down to this:

While well-intentioned attempts to curb smoking may appear bold and decisive, they are in the end timid. The big and most effective step — outlawing cigarettes on the grounds that they undeniably, in the long run, sicken and kill the people who smoke them, and those around them — is not going to happen.

Politicians would be terrified to do it — there are an estimated 45 million smokers in the United States, and no one is going to risk alienating them by completely cutting them off from cigarettes.

In an already shaky economy, the repercussions from shutting down the tobacco industry — the jobs suddenly lost — would be, to put it mildly, highly problematic from a political and real-world standpoint.

The memory of Prohibition would undoubtedly be on lawmakers’ minds. The government once tried to take from people something they had been accustomed to, something that had been legal: alcohol. The outcome was anything but pretty.

Don’t forget the exorbitant taxation on smokes, booze, and, of course, gasoline. Without all the taxation, regulation and in many states a state liquor store monopoly… a typical bottle of vodka probably wouldn’t cost much more than a few liters of brand name cola.

Central to the gummint’s desire to keep gas prices high is how high prices serve to camouflage the huge loot our rulers rake in per gallon from taxes on fuel.

The memory of Prohibition would undoubtedly be on lawmakers’ minds. The government once tried to take from people something they had been accustomed to, something that had been legal: alcohol. The outcome was anything but pretty.

… For some reason this justification is never used when talking about drugs…

But the government currently prohibits a lot of things people use to be allowed to do, people don’t seem to mind. I don’t know why they think cigarettes can’t and won’t be banned. As for a black market — it already exists. I live in a deep blue state with high cigarette taxes. If you don’t think box trucks full of cigarettes from low tax states and hundreds of thousands of packages from online cigarette stores aren’t coming in state daily, you’re very naive.

‘Sin’ taxes don’t get rid of the ‘sin’. They do provide a windfall to the gov. though.

The public cost of smoking and drinking

Taxes on cigarettes and alcohol have often been justified by studies that claim to estimate the “social cost” of these vices. These studies include intangible costs borne by individual consumers, such as “emotional distress”, lost years of life, and individual expenditures on cigarettes and alcohol. These are personal costs, not social costs. They also fail to include the economic benefits the alcohol and cigarette industry gives to the UK in terms of employment and government revenue. Most of these studies should be relegated to the bin of junk statistics.

In fact, smokers and heavy drinkers do not cost the state more. Though smokers may cost more during their working lives, but non-smokers require greater expenditure in pensions, nursing care and welfare payments. Chronic diseases associated with old age are far more expensive than the lethal diseases associated with smoking and alcoholism. Smokers and drinkers are not a burden on the state, and the myth of saints subsidising sinners should not be used to justify tax rises.